Body Armor and Textile Defenses
Investigates passive torso and limb defense, covering material transitions from quilted linen and rawhide to mail, lamellar, and heat-treated steel.
Inside this collection
Interlinked Mail Armor
Covers riveted and solid-ring chainmail, wire-drawing technologies, and tailored mail hauberks across Eurasia.
Scale and Lamellar Armor
Examines individually laced iron, bronze, or rawhide plates utilized from ancient Mesopotamia to dynastic China.
European High Medieval to Renaissance Plate
Details articulated plate cuirasses, greaves, gauntlets, and harness tailoring developed in Milan, Augsburg, and Greenwich.
Japanese Classical O-Yoroi
Focuses on early box-like mounted archer suites of laced lamellae, distinguishing them from later infantry armor.
Japanese Sengoku Tosei-Gusoku
Examines late sixteenth-century bullet-resistant modern plates (tosei-gusoku) influenced by firearms and European trade.
Padded, Quilted, and Buff Garments
Explores multilayered textile defenses including linen gambesons, aketons, and European leather buff coats.
Mesoamerican Ichcahuipilli and Padded Fiber
Analyzes brine-soaked quilted cotton armor used by Mexica and Maya armies against edged projectile weapons.
Indo-Persian Char-Aina and Plated Mail
Covers the four-mirror cuirass, mail and plate combinations, and briolette constructions in South and Central Asia.
Legendary objects deserve
a closer reading.
We study materials, makers and surviving evidence. Legends open the question; history guides the answer.
Our approach